Ryan Blaney aims to take first step towards title defense at Bristol
Four weeks into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, three of the four Championship Four drivers from 2023 have won races. Defending champion Ryan Blaney is the only driver of the four who hasn't.
Despite winning the pole for Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol and leading the Cup Series points standings, the 30 year-old driver is hungry to win his first race of 2024 and officially lock himself into the playoffs, a feat he nearly achieved in a three-wide photo finish at Atlanta in the second race of the season. Despite showing fantastic speed early in the year, that coveted checkered flag has yet to fall into Blaney's hands.
Blaney didn't win his first race of 2023 until Memorial Day at the World 600, and didn't win his second race until October in a thrilling finish with Kevin Harvick. He later won at Martinsville to lock himself into the Championship Four, before winning the title with a second place finish at Phoenix.
One of the best signs for Blaney is the consistency the No. 12 team has showed early on, with three consecutive top-five finishes at three entirely different racetracks. Despite the disappointment of losing by mere inches at Atlanta, top five runs at Las Vegas and Phoenix give Blaney both confidence and evidence that he can contend at a variety of tracks, a must for any driver who wishes to win a title over the grueling Cup Series schedule.
In securing the pole position in Saturday's qualifying session, Blaney ensures that he'll have one of the most valuable assets in modern day Cup Series racing - clean air - when the field takes the green flag on Sunday afternoon. For Blaney, there seems to be no better place than Bristol to capture his first checkered flag of the season.
"The track kinda caught everyone by surprise," Blaney said after winning Saturday's Busch Light pole. "Great to get our first pole of the year and get ready to go tomorrow."
Since joining Team Penske officially in 2018, Blaney has four top 10 finishes in nine starts at the Tennessee track, and has led 493 laps there, with his most impressive Bristol performance coming in the last spring race on the track's concrete surface in 2020, where Blaney led 60 laps before a crash took him out of contention. In the two races on the concrete surface with the Next-Gen car, Blaney led a combined nine laps, with finishes of 30th and 22nd, respectively.
So far, Blaney has checked all the boxes a defending champion should check - leading the points, leading laps and contending at a variety of different racetracks - and all that there seems left to do is win.
Whether or not Blaney captures that victory at Bristol on Sunday remains to be seem, but the Food City 500 certainly seems to be his best chance yet to get his first win of 2024. The green flag will fly at 3:30 p.m. ET. The race will be aired on Fox, with PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio carrying radio coverage.
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